The newest Mutt has built in SMTP so you do not need sandmail. The stable one doesn't have so you will need to configure sendmail to send mail to your IP mail server which will relay it further. I am not using Mutt so I do not know if it has built in support for downloading mails from POP3 and IMAP servers. If I have to guess I think it has it. If it doesn't have you will have to use fetchmail to get your mail from the remote mail server of your IP. You do want to use IMAP and SMTP only with TSL or SSL.

I would not use POP3 period.

Cheers,
OKO

Just following up. I've been configuring my email accounts this past couple weeks gearing up for my move to a new hosting company. I've played around with mutt, mutt-devel, postfix, fetchmail, procmail, etc.

Mutt-devel (and I think mutt-stable) support pop3(s) and imap(s). I'm sticking with mutt-devel because it supports imap header caching (and I'm going to use imaps with my new webhost). Using mutt's built in imap support, I don't need fetchmail and I can configure different mailboxes on the webhost's side, so I don't need procmail. (but they are both great programs to use - it was fun learning procmail's quirky format!)

Mutt-devel does support smtp(s), but it doesn't seem to work very well. I thought I'd be able to just use the one program and be done with it. I had to recompile postfix with sasl support (which isn't compiled in the postfix that comes with NetBSD). But, then I found ssmtp. It does what I need. I am not running a mail server. I have one specific need and that is to relay the mail from mutt and my computer to the smtp server of my webhost. Using postfix (or sendmail) is like using a crowbar to open a bottle cap. It's overkill for my application. Ssmtp works for what I need it to do.

So now my setup is mutt-devel (using it's own built-in imaps support) and ssmtp. Ssmtp works with gmail (a bugger to get to work right using any program!) using smtp over ssl and hopefully it will work with the stmp server of my new webhost (I should be making the switch this weekend - so we'll see).

__________________
And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

Is anyone here using pgp or gpg with email. I was going to install and try out pgp, but pkgsrc warned me that it used a fee-based commercial license. There's gpg, but I really can't stand GNU and try to avoid their software when possible.

I thought I might give it a go, not that I have any illusions of complete privacy, but it might keep the newbie crackers at bay (not that I send any top secret data through email ).

__________________
And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

there is a new minimalistic mta in /usr/ports/mail/ within the
past couple of days.
...............
relevant to the post above... mutt-devel for some reason
does not build here. So I switched to mutt (plain)
...........

there is a new minimalistic mta in /usr/ports/mail/ within the
past couple of days.

Does this new minimalistic MTA have a name?

Quote:

Originally Posted by jb_daefo

...............
relevant to the post above... mutt-devel for some reason
does not build here. So I switched to mutt (plain)
...........

The only extra's that I'm aware of for my setup from mutt-stable (1.4) to mutt-devel (1.5) is builtin smtp support and header cache. Since the builtin smtp support didn't work for me (it failed in sasl authentication -- yes, cyrus-sasl was installed), the only other advantage is header cache.

Since the mailbox it is accessing gets a subscribed mailing, it has currently ~3700 messages. With the header cache it takes about 5 seconds to load, without about 2-3 minutes (every time). I tried the syntax set header_cache = ~/.mutt_cache in mutt-stable, but it claims it isn't supported. Does anyone know of a way to do that in mutt-stable - cache the IMAP headers for quick loading?

__________________
And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

The only extra's that I'm aware of for my setup from mutt-stable (1.4) to mutt-devel (1.5) is builtin smtp support and header cache. Since the builtin smtp support didn't work for me (it failed in sasl authentication -- yes, cyrus-sasl was installed), the only other advantage is header cache.

Since the mailbox it is accessing gets a subscribed mailing, it has currently ~3700 messages. With the header cache it takes about 5 seconds to load, without about 2-3 minutes (every time). I tried the syntax set header_cache = ~/.mutt_cache in mutt-stable, but it claims it isn't supported. Does anyone know of a way to do that in mutt-stable - cache the IMAP headers for quick loading?

I experimented with gnupg. I still have it available, I just don't actively use it any more.

Why confusing? The whole ring-of-trust set up seems to be heavily embraced by a small group of people, and ignored by everyone else. You enroll in one or more of the global trust servers, but you're never sure exactly why you've done so, as it is still a self-certification.

Why Annoying? You get a signed e-mail from someone, and your MUA calls on it's known trust servers.... and you wait 10 seconds only to be told they could not be verified anyway. But then, it was an email to a public mailing list, which did not need to be authenticated in the first place.

Here's another mail related question: which mailbox format do you prefer? mbox and maildir seem to be the two most popular, but there are others.

Don't use mbox unless you don't value your data.

mbox stores each "folder" as a single text file, with the messages all concatenated together. Deleted messages leave holes in the file, and only 1 process can be updating the file at a time. If a process crashed mid-update, you lose the whole "folder". Very slow as well, as the entire file needs to be read to generate the folder listing. Just don't use it!

maildir uses real folders for each mail folder, support sub-folders, and stores each message in individual files. Multiple processes can be updating folders, although only 1 process can update each file. You can multi-task properly (delete messages, create new messages, update messages). And you get much faster performance.